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Long Live the FARC!
Seeing as even the supposed Leftist Revolutionaries believe the lies spread about the Armed Revolutionary movement in Colombia, from ruthless attacks on civilians, stalinist trials, mass executions, civilian terrorism, and above all "narco terrorism; i recommend you to get a copy of the book "Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Drugs; US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia" By Olivar Villar. Over 100 pages of the book are full of sources, he took ten years to write this scholarly book and it is very enlightening. The Colombian Police itself has said that the FARC account for less than 3% of the drug trade, the private Paramilitaries over 40% and the rest... well, presumably the Colombian state itself. The US has sent billions of dollars to the Colombian State to supposedly fight "The War on Drugs" where it really should be called "The War for Drugs". Colombia has become the number 1 producer of cocaine in the world in the last decades, since the US has sent billions of dollars in aid in supposedly eradicating coca fields; but no, the Agent Green that is poisoning so many peasants' crops and animals and causing health problems, is used to get rid of the competition. US Corporations that supply the chemicals for Colombia to produce cocaine, and Banks that launder the money for US narco-bourgeois, have invested interest in making sure that they further control the drug trade and seep billions of dollars a year into their own pockets. Here is an interview with the author of said book.
Solidarity with the FARC!
"It is necessary for Communists to enter into contradiction with the consciousness of the masses. . . The problem with these Transitional programs and transitional demands, which don't enter into any contradiction with the consciousness of the masses, or try to trick the masses into entering into the class struggle, create soviets - [is that] it winds up as common-or-garden reformism or economism." - Mike Macnair, on the necessity of the Minimum and Maximum communist party Program.
"You're lucky. You have a faith. Even if it's only Karl Marx" - Richard Burton
Thanks. I will be sure to read it. Added to my reading list. Heading to McGill University in a few weeks for a semester and doing a module titled 'Politics of Latin America'; Colombia and specifically the civil war will be my focus.
I could never support the FARC, namely because of their violent policies towards autonomous indigenous communities. Part of the violations attached to their name is propaganda, but I've read too much and heard too many firsthand accounts in Colombia to ever consider them a positive revolutionary force. I've posted some of that information here.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/colombian-....html?t=173686
My family has had friends threatened for trying to donate to local poor populations, others kidnapped and used for forced labor in the mountains; some knew fellow students who's parents had no political ties and were still abducted for ransom, and a colleague of mine who had a friend complaining of trying to be coerced and threatened into setting up a student cell within Colombian universities. My own father had to come to the United States because he couldn't finish his education due to the FARC's brand of agitation that constantly had the universities up in smoke and shut down for extended periods of time. Fuck that. That is not how you politicize the working class, with landmines and mortars that kill children all for some nearly arbitrary war with the state prolonged for decades. Beyond the disenfranchised peasants who look to them for a livelihood and a number ideologues, virtually nobody in urban centers believe they are the answer, and those are the reasons beyond bourgeois propaganda.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americ...458588358.html
The FARC simply is not a revolutionary group. It is incapable of carrying out a revolution. And even if they were able to do so, it is questionable whether their perception of a revolution constitutes an actual social revolution. If they somehow, magically, managed to gain political power it should surprise no one when they turn against the working class, ban strikes in order to consolidate a top-down political takeover, and kill workers standing in their way, given their track record of crimes committed against workers and the scanty popular support they enjoy--which some sourced put at no higher than five percent.
Given this, would someone care to explain why I should extend my solidarity to an organisation that is incapable of carrying out an emancipatory social revolution, and instead will form a new oppressive regime over the workers? The FARC obstructs class struggle.
FARC is drug cartel
The FARC should look forward to liberals in the first world carry out a proletarian revolution, and try to learn from them.
You're a fucking idiot; I'm losing patience with people like you, who don't have even the slightest semblance of what constitutes a proletarian revolution.
Why don't you help to organize one in Colombia and show us?
Cause the emancipation of the working class, must be through the conscious self activity of the working class; not a bunch of neck beards with AK's roaming through the jungle.
Was this conversation really so important that a thread from months ago had to be revived?
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But I am not asking you to become a neck beard with an AK roaming through the jungle. Just go there and do things the way you want to, and set an example. Or are you not from the working class yourself, so that your activities won't count as self-activity of the working class?
You're right. This is just silly. I will quit this thread now and let the liberals keep complaining about communist revolutionaries.
FARC doesn't sound scary enough.
FKA: The Mza
2012 Favorite Noob
Aren't FARC actually organizing peace talks with the Colombian government now for some reason? Looks like they abandoned the values of revolution long ago I'm afraid...
There are plenty off indigenous activists, committed union workers, and mobilized students all making strides in resistance against the capitalist state in Colombia. The notion that because the third world is so bad, human rights should be thrown out the window is just as silly to most of them as it is to the critics here on this forum.
"Drug cartels are criminal organizations developed with the primary purpose of promoting and controlling drug trafficking operations."
Is this the primary purpose of the FARC? An armed conflict that spans over multiple decades is costly. In order to generate enough financial means to sustain and survive prolonged armed conflict, drug trafficking becomes an easy means to generate these finances. But their primary task, arguably, is social justice--whatever they mean by that.
How are 12,000 armed men that enjoy less than 5% of the population's support going to "carry out" this "proletarian revolution"? It is rather telling that you would call everyone critical of such a group "liberals," a meaningless buzzword you are using to masquerade your lack of substance in this regard.
Please define "proletarian revolution" and "communism."
As I said, a meaningless buzzword you are using to masquerade the lack of substance. It is used to end debate. 'You are liberals, I'm a communist' and you walk away. That's your intention and through this you coward away from responding to my arguments. And again, to hide your lack of substance. Proposing the working class emancipates itself, how very liberal of us indeed! You have no idea what "liberal" means or you do in which case you are using it as "anyone who disagrees with me."
You call them "communist revolutionaries," but is their aim communism? And if so, then how do they define communism?
This is an infantile response, a red herring in fact. You diverge from the question at hand: is the FARC capable of a communist revolution?
By suggesting he participate what are you aiming at exactly? What is his participation and engaging in self-organised class struggle going to prove? It seems like you're suggesting that since he is not in Colombia he is not allowed to define communism or how to achieve this?
Unless the FARC has been involved in institutions of workers' power in rural and urban areas, they are not capable of making a revolution. Can you provide me with objective sources that the working class and peasants in FARC-controlled areas control the land and means of production?
Which is a good thing. Their possible self-annihilation or transformation into a non-combatant organisation will aid class struggle.
EDIT: In fact, no armed group can make revolution, it can only defend it.
Last edited by Tim Cornelis; 2nd November 2012 at 22:52.
It isn't, I was using the term loosely and vaguely, mainly just to disgruntle their supporters.
I'm afraid I don't see anything good in yet another once-revolutionary organization laying down it's arms in order to grant even more control to the bourgeois state. At least while they were active they had the chance to stand for something.
The problem is that it's highly unlikely anyone will step up to take FARC's place now that their struggle is over. That's not to say that they were the only Communists, Socialists or social activists in Colombia, but the fact is they posed a great deal of threat to the government and US interests in the region. Are we really going to see the same sort of thing take shape again, especially in this new age of complacency amongst the left?
The point is that their struggle was a dead end as they were gradually losing popular support. They have lost the potential of making, or rather defending, a proletarian revolution, or at least revolutionary communities--as they did in the 1960s, and its predecessor in the 1950s.
It is certainly true they were a threat to the government and US interests, but keep in mind that the president, Uribe, enjoyed a majority approval rating (last time I checked), which suggests: the Colombian working class does not want to be emancipated at this point. The FARC, in this sense, is ahead of itself. The task at hand now is the (re)creation of class consciousness, and organising and mobilising the masses against capitalism. (Then the creation of institutions of peasant and workers' power, and finally the defence of these institutions against state repression, which the aim of the FARC was at its inception. Today, there is nothing to defend).
